At Google, most weeks saw half (or more) of my time taken up with meetings. That meant I needed to be really intentional about time-blocking for making progress on projects, and protecting that time from being taken over with more meetings.
Luckily, Google Calendar makes it easy by automatically declining meetings and pausing chat notifications. Here’s how:
How to set focus time in Google Calendar
Click and drag in Calendar to create a new event
Choose ‘Focus time’
[Optional] Change the title to represent what you’ll work on
[Optional] Enable ‘Do not disturb’ to mute chat notifications during that time period
[Optional] Enable ‘Automatically decline meetings’ to have calendar decline and send a message to meetings that are new or pre-existing at the time you’re blocking
Click ‘Save’
That’s it! Now you have some protected time on your calendar, and you don’t need to feel awkward about declining new invites because Calendar will do it for you.
My strategy with time blocks also involves moving them to represent reality. So, if something took longer or shorter I’ll resize it in calendar, then move around other time blocks to make sure I can realistically get everything done in a week.
Prefer to watch and follow along?
Upgrade to a paid subscription to watch me walk-through this example, and support me as a creator. In today’s video I also demonstrate time insights to get a better understanding of how your time is being spent.
Did you know you can also setup booking pages with Google Calendar? Colleagues, clients or customers could book time (and even pay for the slot) with you, all inside calendar. Find out more in my YouTube video here.
Have a great rest of the week!
Dean
